life, the adventures, and the enterprises of Ramus, of Giordano Bruno, of Telesio, and of Campanella, we feel that Bacon and Descartes are not far off. The evil is in the predominance of the spirit of imitation which engenders immense confusion and is betrayed by the absence of method. Absence of method, such is the capital fault of the philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is marked in two ways: 1st, This philosophy scarcely establishes the relation of the different parts of which it is composed; metaphysics, morals, politics, physics are not therein united among themselves by those intimate ties which attest the presence of a single and profound thought. 2d, It cannot discern, and does not seek out among the different parts which it embraces that which must be the fundamental part and the basis of the whole edifice. We thus begin in every thing, to go, we know not to what; there is no order of research which may be accepted as the fixed and necessary point from which philosophy must set out in order to reach its ultimate aim. Or if we wished to find a point of departure common to all systems, we might say that this point of departure is taken in ontology, that is, outside of human nature. We begin in general by God or by external nature, and we arrive as well as we can at man, and that too, without any very well-defined rule, without establishing this manner of proceeding as a principle and as a method. Hence the necessity of a revolution whose character must have been the opposite of that of the philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, to wit, the introduction of a method, and of a method which must have been the opposite of the confused practice of the preceding epoch, the opposite of ontology, that is, psychology. It is this fruitful revolution, with the great systems which it has produced, that I propose to make known to you in my next lecture.

LECTURE XI.

MODERN PHILOSOPHY. SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. SENSUAL

ISM AND IDEALISM.

Modern philosophy.-Its general character.-Two ages in modern philosophy: the first age is that of the philosophy of the seventeenth century, properly so called.-Schools of the seventeenth century. Sensualistic school: Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, Locke.-Idealistic school: Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche.

THE philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries released the human mind from scholasticism, from slavery to a foreign principle-authority; at the same time it prepared it for modern philosophy, for absolute independence; and conducted it from scholasticism to modern philosophy by the intermediation of an epoch wherein authority still reigned, but an authority much more flexible than that of the middle age, the authority of philosophic antiquity. The philosophy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is, as it were, the education of modern thought by ancient thought. Its character is an ardent and often blind imitation; its necessary result was a universal fermentation, and the want of a definitive revolution. This revolution was consummated in the seventeenth century; it is modern philosophy properly so called.

The most general feature which distinguishes it is an entire independence; it is independent both of the authority which reigned in scholasticism, the ecclesiastical authority, and of the authority which reigned in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the admiration of ancient genius. It breaks with every thing past, thinks only of the future, and feels capable of drawing the future from itself. On one hand it might be said that from fear of being charmed by the genius of Plato and of Aristotle, it turns away from them designedly, and even ignorance and dis

dain of them seem the ransom of independence. Bacon and Leibnitz excepted, all the great philosophers of the new era, Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Hobbes, Locke, and their disciples, have no knowledge of, and no respect for antiquity; they scarcely read any thing else than what is found in nature and in consciousness. On the other hand, the progressive secularization of philosophy is evident on all sides: inquire, for example, who are the two great men that founded modern philosophy? Do they belong to the ecclesiastical body, that body which, in the middle age, furnished scholasticism with such great interpreters? No, the two fathers of modern philosophy are two laymen; and, with a few exceptions, it may be said that from the seventeenth century up to our own times, the most illustrious philosophers have not come from the ranks of the Church. Philosophical instruction was, in the middle age, confined to cloisters and convents. Universities were soon after established; this was a considerable step, for in the universities, even of the middle age, were found professors taken from among the laity. The seventeenth century witnessed the establishment of a new institution, which is to universities what universities were to convents; I mean academies. They began in Italy towards the close of the sixteenth century, but it was especially in the seventeenth century that they spread throughout Europe. There are three which from their first institution acquired the greatest glory, and were extremely useful to the free culture of thought. These are, 1st, The Royal Society of London, established on the plan of Bacon;* 2d, the Academy of Sciences at Paris, a useful creation of the genius of Colbert, as the French Academy had been the brilliant creation of the genius of Richelieu; 3d, the Academy of Berlin, not only founded on the plan of Leibnitz, but by Leibnitz himself, who was its first president, and who edited the first volume of its transactions.

* First at Oxford in 1645, then permanently with privilege, at London in 1663. Newton, Locke, &c., were members.

+ In 1700.

The second characteristic of modern philosophy is, as I have already told you, the determination of a fixed point of departure, the adoption of a method; and this point of departure, this method, is the study of human nature, the foundation and necessary instrument of all science and of all philosophy, that is, psychology.

In entering into modern philosophy, to study more particularly its systems, after having recognized its general characteristics, the first reflection presented to us is, that modern philosophy is of very recent date. Without speaking of the East and of India, where dates are so uncertain, in Greece the movement of independent philosophy continued twelve centuries, from Thales and Pythagoras to the end of the school of Athens; whilst the corresponding movement of philosophy in which we all participate, and of which we are the agents and products, this philosophical movement reckons scarcely two centuries. Judge of the vast future that is before modern philosophy, and let this consideration embolden and encourage those who find it so ill assured in its proceedings, so undecided in its results. Although still young it is already great, and in two centuries it has produced so many systems, that in this movement, which is, as it were, of yesterday, one may distinguish two ages: the first, which commences with the seventeenth century and extends towards the middle of the eighteenth; the second, which embraces all the last half of the eighteenth century with the commencement of our own. These two ages have this much in common, that they both participate in the general spirit of modern philosophy; and each of them has this in particular, that it participates more or less in it, and in a different degree: there is harmony between them, but at the same time there is progress from one to the other. I must to-day speak of the first, the philosophy of the seventeenth century.

*This distinction of two epochs in modern philosophy, according to the progress of method itself, is already indicated in the first Series, for example Vol. 2, Discours d'Ouverture, p. 6.